The Second Chance of Benjamin Waterfalls, page 9
This is awkward. I don’t move until my dad elbow-nudges me forward. Slowly, I approach Niimi. With her twirling finger, she signals me to turn around and face the crowd. So, I do. Gulp. All eyes on me. I don’t know which is worse, being humiliated by showing up to this place looking like a five-dollar Halloweendian or being forced into public speaking. I hate being stared at. I’m a thief. I literally rely on not having attention on me.
“Daga,” she says.
Ha. I know that one. “Please what?” I ask.
“Speak.”
What does she want me to say? I don’t know any of these people. I don’t live in this world. I just want to go home. Heck, I’ll even go back to the bookstore if it gets me out of this room.
“Hey,” I say to the crowd.
“Boozhoo!” they shout back to me.
Ugh. There’s that word again. Boozhoo. Booze, who? Whose booze? My dad’s. He’s a drunk. He is the reason I’m here. This is all his fault. I look at him and hope he feels every dagger my eyes are shooting toward him.
“You have to open your mouth to speak. Like how I’m doing right now,” Niimi says, and the room laughs again.
“Well,” I say, “I’m not sure what to tell you. I’m a thief, I guess. But you should know that Miss Bloom Girl over here just bought a kid’s book about caterpillars today. Recommended reading age was three to six years old. Good luck with her as the head of the tribe someday.”
The crowd laughs. But I wasn’t joking. Even my dad is laughing. And Niimi and her dad are laughing too.
“He’s quite the aadizookewinini, isn’t he?” Niimi says to the crowd.
They laugh again. “What’s that mean?” I ask her. “What did you just call me?”
“I called you a storyteller. And that’s a good thing, Benny. Most people with holes in their hearts decide to give up. They believe the whole world gave up on them, when in reality, it was they who gave up on the world. But you, you steal and tell yourself stories about how it’s not your fault. Never your fault. Always someone else’s, am I right?” she asks in front of everyone.
“It’s his fault,” I say, and point to my dad.
The crowd clasps their hands together, like Niimi just did something amazing, but she didn’t. I’m just telling the truth.
“This is a girl who wears a mask, but she’s no superhero. She’s not even that nice. And my dad isn’t some sweet and kind man that you all think he is. I’m out of here,” I say, and start to walk out of the now-very-silent room.
“Everything you’re feeling is right on schedule, Benny,” Niimi says.
I stop. “You don’t know me,” I say, and try to kick the double doors open. But they open the other way. It’s pull, not push, so I look like a crash test dummy that just kicked a closed door and nearly slammed my body into it from the momentum.
“Life is give and take, but doors are push or pull. To open them, you must first—”
“Oh, shut up! You’re not wise. You’re just a kid, like me. And us kids are full of mistakes. You shouldn’t be the head of anything. In fact, it was a mistake coming here. You can all go bloom yourselves!” I shout, and open the door and begin to walk out.
“Do we have a winner?” Niimi asks the crowd.
An old woman who looks nearly a hundred raises her hand. I stop to see what the heck is going on. A winner? For what?
“Mrs. Cloquet, what did you have?” Niimi asks.
Mrs. Cloquet pulls out a small folded sheet of paper, unfolds it, and reads, “Shut up. You’re not wise. You’re just an old man. It was a mistake coming here,” she says, and looks up at Niimi. “I thought he’d be speaking to your father, though.”
“Close enough. You win,” Niimi says.
The crowd applauds.
“But I did like his improvisations. I really liked the you-guys-can-go-bloom-yourselves bit,” Mrs. Cloquet adds. “He’s very clever.”
The room laughs again. “It should be a bumper sticker,” another man adds.
“Is everything funny to you people?” I shout.
“You people?” Niimi asks, which causes the crowd to go silent.
“I obviously didn’t mean it like that,” I say.
“How’d you mean it?” Niimi asks.
“I just mean … I don’t know. Not everything is funny. Life isn’t. Sometimes it really sucks,” I say on my way out of there. “Like right now.”
Niimi’s father finally speaks. “Life is a story, Benny. You get to choose what kind. Ojibwe humor is rooted back to the very first Anishinaabe man and woman. When we first began to speak. Our first words weren’t ‘wow, we can talk’ or ‘are you hungry’ or ‘good morning.’ Our first words were a riddle. Would you like to know the riddle?” he asks me.
“No. I’m done with all your jokes,” I yell.
“We’ve experienced enough tragedies. It’s time to choose to make life a comedy. Isn’t it funny that we’re all alive on a spinning rock, hurtling through space, while dressed up in our skin and bones, trying to understand the meaning to our existence? Life is a riddle. And we’ll laugh as we try to figure it all out all the way to the next world,” he says.
“Did you laugh when your wife died?” I ask, and hurry through the hallway toward the parking lot before he can respond.
I can’t believe I just asked him that. I feel awful. Of course he didn’t laugh. He’d already expressed how difficult life is without her. What’s wrong with me? And Niimi … If she didn’t hate me already, she most certainly does now.
I brush the guilt away. It’s their fault for trying to make life sound like a sitcom. Life isn’t funny. It isn’t a riddle. It’s a take-what-you-can-get-before-you’re-dead kind of world. I just want to get this boot camp started so I can go back to Duluth.
In the hallway, a glass display holding a bunch of art catches my eye. Not so much the actual art, but my reflection from the glass. They planned all of this. My appearance. My outburst. Everything. They just wanted to humiliate me. Of course, they were all laughing. Why wouldn’t they? I look hilarious.
What kind of boot camp is this?
I’m done!
CHAPTER 10
LIGHTNING DANCER
“I wish I was there to see it,” Wendy says as soon as I walk through the door.
“Yeah. I was a hit.” I walk past Hawaii. I just want to change, wash my face, and go to sleep.
“How was the food?” she asks. “Did you bring any back?”
“No, sorry,” I lie.
“Where’s Tommy?” she asks.
“He’s right behind me. But I don’t want to talk to him. And I don’t really want to talk to you, either. You let me walk right into that trap,” I say, and head toward the bathroom.
“Aren’t you going to ask how my night was?”
“No.”
“Well, George and I had pizza, and I watched him play—”
“Wendy. You’re not my family,” I say. “In fact, you’re the opposite of my family. You judge me for being a thief, but you’re the biggest thief of all. You stole my dad.” I slam the bathroom door.
The mirror looks back at me. I can’t believe I was seen in public like this. I splash water over my face, and the sink fills with painted water. As the liquid swirls down the drain, so do my words to Wendy.
I don’t know why I was so mean to her. I don’t know why I was so mean to Niimi’s dad either. What’s happening to me? I thought this place was supposed to make me feel better. I feel worse. And I don’t want to face these feelings. Feelings are for crybabies. I need to sleep. That’s all. I scrub my face, hoping to remove the paint and these annoying emotions.
There’s a knock on the door. I dry off and swing it open. “Living room. Now,” my dad says, and walks away.
This is not good.
Tommy and Wendy are waiting for me in the living room. Right outside Jamaica, which puts them somewhere in the carpeted sea. Wendy stares at me, both lips tucked into her mouth. I know that look. My mom does it too when she has something to say but is waiting for the right moment. My dad reaches out and takes Wendy’s hand. His eyes are wide, lips pursed, making dozens of little ripples around his mouth, “You have something to say?” he asks me.
“I do if you do,” I say to him.
“Excuse me?” he asks.
“After what you just put me through, you want me to apologize? How about you apologize for once in your life? You made me look like a complete fool in front of all those people. You let them all laugh at me and call me a thief!”
“I must have gotten all my information wrong. So, you’re not a thief?” he asks sarcastically.
“That’s not the point,” I interject.
“That is precisely the point. That’s the only reason why you were there tonight. Dressing you up and putting all the paint on your face was to keep your mind off hating me for a few minutes. You’ve hated me since the moment you arrived. I needed to distract you from that anger. If I hadn’t done it, there was a very slim chance of even convincing you to go.”
“Oh, so I should be thanking you?” I ask.
“No. I want you to stop thinking about yourself as the victim for once and start thinking about what you said to Wendy,” he says.
I look at Wendy. She may look tough, but I see that she wants to cry.
“Sorry, Wendy,” I say.
“Sorry for what?” she asks.
Great. She’s milking the moment. “I shouldn’t have said what I said, but I said it and you heard it and I can’t unsay it and you can’t unhear it so all I can say is I’m sorry. You happy now?” And I dive my hands into my pockets while keeping my eyes on anything but her.
Jeez. They were just words. Get over it.
“But you can unsay it and I can unhear it,” she says to me, her pained eyes brightening with blue excitement.
“Really? You own a time machine?” I ask.
“Everyone has one. Wanna see it?” she asks.
“Another stupid game. Sure.”
“Go outside. Come back in. Boom. That’s my time machine. Hurry up.”
I look at my dad, but he’s smiling at her. He likes what she just said, even though we both know it’s complete madness. “Now,” she reminds me.
I can’t believe she wants me to do this. Role play. Two adults wanting me to pretend. Fine. I already played dress-up with them. I walk past them and open the door, and as I shut it, my dad grabs the handle. “Wait for me. I was out there with you,” he says.
My dad joins me outside. It’s just me and him and him and me. I take a deep breath and reach for the door, but my dad lifts his arm up, signaling me to wait.
“What?” I ask.
“Give her a minute. She needs to get into character,” he says.
“Character? She just playing herself … From literally two minutes ago,” I say.
“Going back in time two minutes, or two hundred years, still takes focus. Focus takes time. She takes these roles seriously. She took theater in high school. Let her become the Wendy of minutes two past,” he says.
“When you say things like that, you really don’t hear how bonkers you sound, do you?” I ask.
“What’s the matter? Is the thief afraid of Wendy stealing the scene?” he asks, and nudges his finger into my chest.
“There is no scene. I’m only here because the judge forced me to be here. These little games may be fun for you and Wendy, but they’re not for me. Do you understand that?” I ask.
“The judge forced you, huh? That reminds me of a joke I know. Wanna hear it?” he asks, and suddenly I think he just wants to keep me out here for some weird alone time. He’ll even attempt to make up a joke on the spot. It won’t be funny, but that’s not the point. He just wants to cram my many years of hating him together and replace it with a two-minute bonding session. Well, guess what? Not happening.
“No,” I say, and reach for the door, but he lifts his finger—so I stop—ugh. I don’t know why that finger thingy still works on me.
“When the thief got caught, the judge was forced to give him a very long sentence because of what the thief stole from him … Now, what did the thief steal?”
“That’s a riddle, not a joke,” I say.
“What did the thief steal?”
“I give up.”
“All the punctuation keys from his keyboard,” he says, and laughs. “Get it? Without them, he’s forced to give long sentences.”
He stops laughing when he sees that I’m not amused.
“Can I go in now?”
“I’m waiting on you. Wendy’s always ready,” he says.
Ugh. He’s so frustrating. I open the door and enter. And just like she was, Wendy greets me as I enter. Or reenter. Whatever. This time my dad follows closely behind me, probably to make sure I don’t screw this up again.
“How did it go?” Wendy asks happily.
“Oh, hi, Wendy. It was amazing. The stunt you and my dad pulled by making me dress up like a super-offensive cosplay Indian was a smash. Everyone laughed at me. It was great. How was your night?” I say.
She smiles. “It was pretty good. George and I had pizza, and I watched him shoot a bunch of zombies that tried to invade his military compound. Thanks for asking,” she says.
“Okay. Well … I guess that’s it,” I say, and walk past her.
“Wait,” she says.
I turn around. “What! Did I not do it good enough?” I ask.
“You were great. I was just going to tell you that there’s still some pizza left. Are you hungry?” she asks.
I am hungry. So hungry. All I had today was half a grilled cheese, two brownies, and three small Rice Krispies treats. “Really? Yes. I’d love some pizza.”
“Great. Why don’t you change first. You look ridiculous. Then come back for some grub. George promised to meet you when you got home, so try not to look like a zombie … Or he’ll likely kill you,” she says jokingly.
“Okay,” I say, and retreat into the garage to change.
The fluorescent lights flicker on. All three dogs are sleeping on my bed, taking up the entire mattress. Great. My bed is going to smell like dog. I slip into a pair of sweatpants and my favorite oversize purple hoodie. I don’t remember where I got it, but it’s by far the most comfortable article of clothing I own. I sleep in it almost every night, which explains why it’s so faded. My mom said there was a Vikings logo on it once, but ever since I can remember, it’s just been a purple hoodie. Now that I’m older, it’s still big on me, but I’m no longer swimming in it.
The thought of pizza quickens my feet back into the main part of the house. I hope there’s a lot left over. I can usually eat a whole pizza by myself.
As I step into the living room, I see George. And he sees me. We just stare at each other. My dad and Wendy watch us lock eyes like we are two lions waiting for one to make the first move.
“Hey, that’s my hoodie,” my dad says. “I haven’t seen that in years.”
Now I want to burn it.
George is taller than me, and what I didn’t notice in his dark bedroom is his skin is much darker than mine. His hair is very short and black, but there is a white streak in it, as if a small part of his head thinks it is time to be an old man. He wears a white thermal shirt under his blue Minnesota Timberwolves tee. And red plaid pajama bottoms cover his long legs.
“You’re Black?” I blurt out.
I didn’t see that coming, and sometimes when I’m caught off guard, I speak with no filter.
“Thanks for letting me know,” he says. “I had no idea.”
“George, this is Benny. Benny this is my son, George,” Wendy says.
“He’s ugly,” George says, which sneaks out a snicker from my dad.
“He’s not that ugly,” Wendy says.
“It just looks that way because he’s in a house full of super-attractive people. Trust me, outside in the world, he’s average-looking,” my dad adds.
Oh, awesome. More jokes. I bet Grand Portage is the birthplace of all comedians.
“I hear you’re going to be staying here for a little bit. Apparently, I had no say in it, but I do have one rule … My room is off-limits. You don’t go in there,” George says to me. “Understand?”
“I don’t know how much they told you about me, so I’m going to let you in on a little secret … I don’t follow rules very well. In fact, I’ve already been in your room,” I say.
His eyes widen, then dance over to Wendy and back to me. “Yeah, right,” he says.
“You were playing your video game. You didn’t even notice me in there. I could have taken whatever I wanted while you were shooting zombies,” I say.
He looks pissed. Maybe I shouldn’t have started it off this way, but one thing I can’t stand is someone my own age trying to give me rules. Especially a nerd.
“You touch my stuff, and I’ll punch you in the face,” he says.
“Fellas…” My dad steps in. “There will be no punching in this house.”
“How you going to punch me if you can’t catch me? I mean, all I got to do is take a step outside, right?” I say.
His eyes shoot to Wendy. “You told him!”
“I didn’t say—” she starts.
“I met him! There! You happy? If he comes into my room again, I’m going to stuff him into a suitcase and leave him by the door. In fact, all of you stay out of my room!” George says, and walks back to his bedroom.
The door slams loudly, which causes Wendy to jump. “That went well,” I say.
“Why did you say that to him, Benny?” my dad asks.
“Obviously, so he’d do what he just did,” I say.
“And why did you want him to do that?” Wendy asks.
“Easy. More pizza for me.” I grab two slices off the coffee table. They’re not hot anymore, but warm pizza is almost as good as hot pizza. In fact, cold pizza is almost as good as warm pizza. The only pizza I don’t like is no pizza. I start walking back toward the garage.
